No Fly List Grows, Along With Injustice For Those Wrongly Stuck On It

An Associated Press report today reveals that, “Even as the Obama administration says it's close to defeating al-Qaida, the size of the government's secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the United States has more than doubled in the past year.” The AP’s Eileen Sullivan reports that the “No Fly List” has grown to about 21,000 people, including some 500 Americans.

The ACLU has filed a legal challenge on behalf of fifteen American citizens and lawful permanent residents who cannot fly to or from the U.S. or over its airspace because they are on the list. Today’s article quotes one of the ACLU lawyers working on the case, Nusrat Choudhury, who said, “The news that the list is growing tells us that more people's rights are being violated. It's a secret list, and the government puts people on it without any explanation. Citizens have been stranded abroad."

Indeed, none of our plaintiffs, including two veterans of the U.S. Marine Corps (one of whom is disabled), a U.S. Army veteran, and a U.S. Air Force veteran, have been told why they are on the list or given a meaningful chance to clear their names (watch a video with retired Marine Ayman Latif here). Yet, they have been prevented from flying to visit relatives, go to school, and access employment opportunities. Those who were stranded abroad due to placement on the No Fly List while traveling overseas were permitted to fly home to the U.S. on what appear to be one-time only waivers due to the ACLU’s intervention through its lawsuit.

To deprive people of their right to travel without any notice or opportunity to object is unfair and unconstitutional. The news that the list is getting bigger only magnifies the problem.

Anonymous

Anonymous

There won't be a problem if idiot right wingers stop taking over the propoganda machine, the government and stop sh1tting on the Bill of Rights.

February 14, 2012

11:48 AM

Anonymous

Hello all, my name is Ray, I hold a United kingdom passport, and have a clean record, last year I was put on a TSA no fly list, so I cannot book flights from any travel agents, that fly trough or have stops in the US, I am going to open a production facility in China and luckily there is a non stop flight from Tijuana, to Shanghai, Homeland security maybe costing the US plenty. There is nothing I can do, so this is only a comment! Good Luck.

June 3, 2014

10:53 PM

Anonymous

If I'd known what kind of living nightmare I was going to be dropped into the day they burned my former husband out of existence so completely that no physical remains of him were ever found, I never would have lasted this long.
If I'd known everybody was going to turn his death into some silly political game, I never would have lasted this long.
I never would have lasted because I think I would have chosen suicide over being forced to put up with THIS cockamamie bullshit.
It's too late now to give into the option of oblivion. Now I'm forced to endure things I never would have thought existed in the deepest darkest pits of hell much less on earth and in my own country.

We shared a daughter together. I had to look into her eyes and tell her that her dad was never coming back home because the state of New York was going to declare him "dead in absentia." Which usually means you wait seven years before you can declare it a legal death, that no evidence of him exists to make it official any other way.
Someone in the government overrode the 7 years requirement and issued a death certificate 10 day later, with a form that on the top read 'Death In Absentia.'
I had to tell my daughter what THAT meant too, even though I BAREly knew it myself.
My daughter was a minor when this happened which is why I had to go through all this. After she turned 18 I didn't have to do it because she became his next of kin.

It's always been personal to me. It's NEVer been about playing games and turning everything Republican vs. Democrat.
I'll never understand why it's gone that direction but my daughter noticed it happening even before I did.